the same way a guest drinks with his neighbour and with his
attendant geisha. I have a vivid memory of a grave and elderly
dignitary who at the merry stage of such a function capered the whole
length of the room with his kneeling-cushion balanced on the top of
his head. There is a growing temperance movement in Japan but a
teetotaller is still something of an oddity. My abstinence from _sake_
was frequently supposed to be the result of a vow.

Although the average geisha may be inane in her patter and have little
more than conventional grace and charm, I have been waited on by girls
who added real mental celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to
that elusive and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable
position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in both the
comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of unmistakable genius.
Frequently a plain, elderly geisha will display unsuspected mimetic
ability. Alas, behind the merry laugh and sprightliness of the girls
who adorn a feast lurks a skeleton. One is haunted by thoughts of the
future of a large proportion of these butterflies. No doubt most
foreigners generalise too freely in identifying the professions of
geisha and _joro_. In the present organisation of society some geisha
play a legitimate role. They gain in the career for which they have
laboriously trained an outlet for the expression of artistic and
social gifts which would have been denied them in domestic life. At
the same time the degrading character of the life led by many geisha
cannot be doubted. Apart from every other consideration the temptation
to drink is great. The opening of new avenues to feminine ability, the
enlarged opportunities of education and self-respect and the
increasing opening for women on the stage--from which women have been
excluded hitherto--must have their effect in turning the minds of
girls of wit and originality to other means of earning a living than
the morally and physically hazardous profession of the geisha.

When we left Matsue by steamer on our way to Tottori prefecture I saw
middle-school eights at practice. An agriculturist told me of the
custom of giving holidays to oxen and horses. The villagers carefully
brush their animals, decorate them and lead them to pastures where,
tethered to rings attached to a long rope, "they may graze together
pleasantly." One of the islands we visited bore the name of the giant
radish, Daikon, which is itself